Everything about 9 11 totally explained
The
September 11, 2001 attacks (often referred to as
9/11) were a series of coordinated
suicide attacks by
al-Qaeda upon the
United States.
On that morning, terrorists affiliated with al-Qaeda
hijacked four commercial passenger
jet airliners. The hijackers intentionally crashed two of the airliners into the
World Trade Center in
New York City, resulting in the collapse of both buildings soon afterward and extensive damage to nearby buildings. The hijackers crashed a third airliner into
the Pentagon. The fourth plane crashed into a field near
Shanksville in rural
Somerset County, Pennsylvania after passengers and members of the
flight crew on the fourth aircraft attempted to retake control of their plane.
Excluding the hijackers,
2,974 people died as an immediate result of the attacks with another 24 missing and presumed dead. The overwhelming majority of casualties were
civilians, including nationals from over 90 different countries. In addition, the death of at least one person from
lung disease was ruled by a medical examiner to be a result of exposure to dust from the World Trade Center's collapse, as rescue and recovery workers were exposed to airborne contaminants following the World Trade Center's collapse.
The attacks had major ramifications around the world, with the United States declaring a
War on Terrorism in response and launching an invasion of
Afghanistan to depose the
Taliban; who had been accused of willfully harboring terrorists. The United States passed the
USA PATRIOT Act, as many nations around the world strengthened their anti-terrorism legislation and expanded law enforcement powers. Stock exchanges were closed for almost a week, and posted enormous losses immediately upon reopening, with airline and insurance industries suffering the greatest financial losses. The economy of
Lower Manhattan ground to a halt, as billions of dollars in office space was damaged or destroyed.
The damage to the Pentagon was cleared and repaired within a year, and a small memorial built on the site. Rebuilding the World Trade Center site has been more contentious, with controversy over possible designs as well as the pace of construction. The selection of the
Freedom Tower for the site has drawn extensive criticism, forcing the abandonment of some parts of the project.
Attacks
Early in the morning on
September 11,
2001,
nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners en route to
California from
Logan International,
Dulles International, and
Newark airports. Another group of hijackers flew
American Airlines Flight 77 into
the Pentagon, and a fourth flight,
United Airlines Flight 93, whose ultimate target was the
U.S. Capitol building, crashed near
Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
During the hijacking of the airplanes, some passengers and crew members were able to make phone calls using the cabin
GTE airphone service and
mobile phones. They reported that several
hijackers were aboard each plane. The terrorists had reportedly taken control of the aircraft by using knives and
box-cutter knives to kill
flight attendants and at least one pilot or passenger, including the captain of Flight 11,
John Ogonowski. The
9/11 Commission established that two of the hijackers had recently purchased
Leatherman multi-function
hand tools. Some form of noxious chemical spray, such as
tear gas or
pepper spray, was reported to have been used on American 11 and United 175 to keep passengers out of the first-class cabin. A flight attendant on Flight 11, a passenger on Flight 175, and passengers on Flight 93 mentioned that the hijackers had bombs, but one of the passengers also mentioned he thought the bombs were fake. No traces of explosives were found at the crash sites. The
9/11 Commission Report believed the bombs were probably fake. According to the transcript of Flight 93's recorder, one of the hijackers gave the order to
roll the plane once it became evident that they'd lose control of the plane to the passengers. Soon afterward, the aircraft crashed into a field near Shanksville in
Stonycreek Township,
Somerset County, Pennsylvania, at 10:03:11 a.m.
local time (14:03:11 UTC). Al-Qaeda leader
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed mentioned in a 2002 interview with
Yosri Fouda, an
al Jazeera journalist, that Flight 93's target was the
United States Capitol, which was given the
code name "the Faculty of Law".
Three buildings in the World Trade Center Complex collapsed due to
structural failure on the day of the attack. The south tower (WTC 2) fell at approximately 9:59 a.m., after burning for 56 minutes in a fire caused by the impact of United Airlines Flight 175.
The
National Institute of Standards and Technology launched investigations into the cause of collapse for the three buildings, subsequently expanding the investigation to include questions over measures to prevent progressive collapse, such as fire resistance design and retrofitting of structural steel. The report into WTC 1 and WTC 2 was concluded in October 2005, and the investigation into WTC 7 is ongoing. The current NIST hypothesis attributes the collapse to "fire and/or debris induced structural damage." Aircraft already in flight were either turned back or redirected to airports in
Canada or
Mexico. News sources aired unconfirmed and often contradictory reports throughout the day. One of the most prevalent of these reported that a
car bomb had been detonated at the
U.S. State Department's headquarters in Washington, D.C. Soon after reporting for the first time on the Pentagon crash, CNN and other media also briefly reported that a fire had broken out on the
Washington Mall. Another report went out on the
AP wire, claiming that a
Delta 767—Flight 1989—had been hijacked. This report, too, turned out to be in error; the plane was briefly thought to represent a hijack risk, but it responded to controllers and landed safely in
Cleveland, Ohio.
Casualties
There were 2,974 fatalities, excluding the 19 hijackers: 246 on the four planes (from which there were no survivors), 2,603 in New York City in the towers and on the ground, and 125 at the Pentagon. An additional 24 people remain listed as missing. All of the fatalities in the attacks were
civilians except for 55 military personnel killed at the Pentagon. More than 90 countries lost citizens in the attacks on the World Trade Center.
NIST estimated that approximately 17,400 civilians were in the
World Trade Center complex at the time of the attacks, while turnstile counts from the
Port Authority suggest that 14,154 people were typically in the Twin Towers by 8:45 a.m. The vast majority of people below the impact zone safely evacuated the buildings, along with 18 individuals who were in the impact zone in the south tower. 1,366 people died who were at or above the floors of impact in the North Tower. According to the Commission Report, hundreds were killed instantly by the impact, while the rest were trapped and died after the tower collapsed. As many as 600 people were killed instantly or were trapped at or above the floors of impact in the South Tower.
|-
|
American 11
| 88
|-
|
United 175
| 59
|-
!rowspan="2"| Arlington
|
Pentagon
| 125
|-
|
American 77 || 59
|-
! Shanksville
|
United 93
| 40
|-
!colspan="2"| Total
| 2,974 died and another 24 remain listed as missing.
|}
At least 200 people jumped to their deaths from the burning towers (as depicted in the photograph "
The Falling Man"), landing on the streets and rooftops of adjacent buildings hundreds of feet below. Some of the occupants of each tower above its point of impact made their way upward toward the roof in hope of helicopter rescue, but the roof access doors were locked. No plan existed for helicopter rescues, and on September 11, the thick smoke and intense heat would have prevented helicopters from conducting rescues.
A total of 411 emergency workers who responded to the scene lost their lives as they attempted to implement rescue and fire suppression efforts. The
New York City Fire Department lost 341 firefighters and 2 FDNY
Paramedics. The
New York City Police Department lost 23 officers. The
Port Authority Police Department lost 37 officers. Private
EMS units lost 8 additional
EMTs and
paramedics.
Cantor Fitzgerald L.P., an investment bank on the 101st–105th floors of One World Trade Center, lost 658 employees, considerably more than any other employer.
Marsh Inc., located immediately below Cantor Fitzgerald on floors 93–101 (the location of
Flight 11's impact), lost 295 employees, and 175 employees of
Aon Corporation were killed. After New York,
New Jersey was the hardest hit
state, with the town of
Hoboken sustaining the most fatalities.
The city was able to identify remains for only approximately 1,600 of the victims at the World Trade Center. The medical examiner's office also collected "about 10,000 unidentified bone and tissue fragments that can't be matched to the list of the dead." Bone fragments were still being found in 2006 as workers prepared the damaged
Deutsche Bank Building for demolition.
Damage
In addition to the 110-floor Twin Towers of the World Trade Center itself, numerous other buildings at the World Trade Center site were destroyed or badly damaged, including
7 World Trade Center,
6 World Trade Center,
5 World Trade Center,
4 World Trade Center, the
Marriott World Trade Center and
St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church. The
Deutsche Bank Building across
Liberty Street from the World Trade Center complex was later condemned due to the uninhabitable, toxic conditions inside the office tower, and is undergoing deconstruction. The
Borough of Manhattan Community College's Fiterman Hall at 30 West Broadway was also condemned due to extensive damage in the attacks, and is slated for
deconstruction. Other neighboring buildings including
90 West Street and the
Verizon Building suffered major damage, but have since been restored.
World Financial Center buildings,
One Liberty Plaza, the
Millenium Hilton, and
90 Church Street had moderate damage. Communications equipment atop the North Tower, including broadcast radio, television and
two-way radio antenna towers were also destroyed, but media stations were quickly able to reroute signals and resume broadcasts. In
Arlington County, a portion of the Pentagon was severely damaged by fire and one section of the building collapsed.
Rescue and recovery
The
New York Fire Department quickly deployed 200 units (half of the department) to the site, whose efforts were supplemented by numerous off-duty firefighters and
EMTs. The
New York Police Department sent
Emergency Service Units (ESU) and other police personnel. During the emergency response, FDNY commanders, the NYPD, and the Port Authority police had limited ability to share information and coordinate their efforts. As conditions deteriorated, the NYPD received information from its helicopters, and were able to pass along evacuation orders that allowed most of its officers to safely evacuate before the buildings collapsed.
Attackers and their motivation
The attacks were consistent with the overall mission statement of
al-Qaeda, as set out in a 1998
fatwā issued by
Osama bin Laden,
Ayman al-Zawahiri,
Ahmed Refai Taha,
Mir Hamzah, and Fazlur Rahman declaring that it was the "duty of every Muslim" to "kill Americans anywhere."
Al-Qaeda
The origins of
al-Qaeda date back to 1979 when the
Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Soon after the invasion, Osama bin Laden traveled to Afghanistan where he helped organize Arab
mujahideen and established the
Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK) organization to resist the Soviets. In 1989, as the Soviets withdrew, MAK was transformed into a "rapid reaction force" in
jihad against governments across the Muslim world. Under the guidance of al-Zawahiri, Osama became more radical. In 1996, bin Laden issued his first fatwā which called for American soldiers to get out of Saudi Arabia.
In a second fatwā issued in 1998, bin Laden outlined his objections to American
foreign policy towards
Israel, as well as the continued presence of American troops in
Saudi Arabia after the
Gulf War. Bin Laden used
Islamic texts to exhort violent action against American military and citizenry until the stated grievances are reversed, noting "
ulema have throughout
Islamic history unanimously agreed that the
jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the
Muslim countries." At that point, Bin Laden and al-Qaeda were in a period of transition, having just relocated back to
Afghanistan from
Sudan. The
1998 African Embassy bombings marked a turning point, with bin Laden intent on attacking the United States. As many as 27 members of al-Qaeda attempted to enter the United States to take part in the September 11 attacks.
The
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States was formed by the United States government and was commonly called the
9/11 Commission. It released its report on
July 22,
2004, concluding that the attacks were conceived and implemented by members of al-Qaeda. The Commission stated that "9/11 plotters eventually spent somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000 to plan and conduct their attack, but that the specific origin of the funds used to execute the attacks remained unknown."
Hijackers
Fifteen of the attackers were from
Saudi Arabia, two from the
United Arab Emirates, one from
Egypt, and one from
Lebanon. In sharp contrast to the standard profile of suicide bombers, the hijackers were well-educated, mature adults, whose belief systems were fully formed.
Within hours of the attacks, the FBI was able to determine the names and in many cases the personal details of the suspected pilots and hijackers.
Mohamed Atta's luggage, which didn't make the connection from his Portland flight onto Flight 11, contained papers that revealed the identity of all 19 hijackers, and other important clues about their plans, motives, and backgrounds. On the day of the attacks, the
National Security Agency intercepted communications that pointed to Osama bin Laden, as did
German intelligence agencies.
On
September 27,
2001, the FBI released photos of the 19 hijackers, along with information about the possible nationalities and aliases of many. The FBI investigation into the attacks, code named operation
PENTTBOM, was the largest and most complex investigation in the history of the FBI, involving over 7,000
special agents. The
United States government determined that
al-Qaeda, headed by Osama bin Laden, bore responsibility for the attacks, with the FBI stating "evidence linking al-Qaeda and bin Laden to the attacks of September 11 is clear and irrefutable". The
Government of the United Kingdom reached the same conclusion regarding al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden's culpability for the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden's declaration of a
holy war against the United States, and a
fatwā signed by bin Laden and others calling for the killing of American civilians in 1998, are seen by investigators as evidence of his motivation to commit such acts.
Bin Laden initially denied, but later admitted, involvement in the incidents. On
September 16,
2001, bin Laden denied any involvement with the attacks by reading a statement which was broadcast by
Qatar's
Al Jazeera satellite channel: "I stress that I've not carried out this act, which appears to have been carried out by individuals with their own motivation." This denial was broadcast on U.S. news networks and worldwide.
In November 2001, U.S. forces recovered a videotape from a destroyed house in
Jalalabad, Afghanistan, in which Osama bin Laden is talking to
Khaled al-Harbi. In the tape, bin Laden admits foreknowledge of the attacks. The tape was broadcast on various news networks from
December 13,
2001. His distorted appearance on the tape has been attributed to tape transfer artifact.
On
December 27,
2001, a second bin Laden video was released. In the video, he states, "Terrorism against America deserves to be praised because it was a response to injustice, aimed at forcing America to stop its support for
Israel, which kills our people," but he stopped short of admitting responsibility for the attacks.
Shortly before the
U.S. presidential election in 2004, in a
taped statement, bin Laden publicly acknowledged al-Qaeda's involvement in the attacks on the U.S, and admitted his direct link to the attacks. He said that the attacks were carried out because "we are free…and want to regain freedom for our nation. As you undermine our security we undermine yours." Osama bin Laden says he'd personally directed the 19 hijackers. In the video, he says, "We had agreed with the Commander-General Muhammad Atta, Allah have mercy on him, that all the operations should be carried out within 20 minutes, before Bush and his administration notice."
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
In a 2002 interview with
al Jazeera journalist
Yosri Fouda, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed admitted his involvement, along with
Ramzi Binalshibh, in the "Holy Tuesday operation." The
9/11 Commission Report determined that the animosity towards the United States felt by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the "principal architect" of the 9/11 attacks, stemmed "not from his experiences there as a student, but rather from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel." Mohamed Atta shared this same motivation. Ralph Bodenstein, a former classmate of Atta described him as "most imbued actually about... U.S. protection of these
Israeli politics in the region."
Abdulaziz al-Omari, a hijacker aboard Flight 11 with Mohamed Atta, said in his video will, "My work is a message those who heard me and to all those who saw me at the same time it's a message to the infidels that you should leave the Arabian peninsula defeated and stop giving a hand of help to the coward Jews in Palestine."
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was arrested on
March 1,
2003 in
Rawalpindi,
Pakistan. Mohammed ultimately ended up at
Guantanamo Bay. During US hearings in March 2007, which have been "widely criticized by lawyers and human rights groups as sham tribunals", Mohammed again confessed his responsibility for the attacks, "I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z."
Other al-Qaeda members
In "Substitution for Testimony of Khalid Sheik Mohammed" from the trial of
Zacarias Moussaoui, five people are identified as having been completely aware of the operations details. They are: Osama bin Laden, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,
Ramzi Binalshibh,
Abu Turab Al-Urduni and
Mohammed Atef. To date, only peripheral figures have been tried or convicted in connection with the attacks. Bin Laden hasn't yet been formally indicted for the attacks.
On September 26, 2005, the
Spanish high court directed by judge
Baltasar Garzón sentenced
Abu Dahdah to 27 years of imprisonment for
conspiracy on the 9/11 attacks and as part of the terrorist organization al-Qaeda. At the same time, another 17 al-Qaeda members were sentenced to penalties of between six and eleven years. On February 16, 2006, the Spanish
Supreme Court reduced the Abu Dahdah penalty to 12 years because it considered that his participation in the conspiracy wasn't proven.
Motive
Many of the eventual findings of the 9/11 Commission with respect to motives have been supported by other experts.
Counter-terrorism expert
Richard A. Clarke explains in his book,
Against All Enemies, that U.S. foreign policy decisions including "confronting Moscow in Afghanistan, inserting the U.S. military in the Persian Gulf," and "strengthening Israel as a base for a southern flank against the Soviets" contributed to al-Qaeda's motives. Others, such as
Jason Burke, foreign correspondent for
The Observer, focus on a more political aspect to the motive, stating that "bin Laden is an activist with a very clear sense of what he wants and how he hopes to achieve it. Those means may be far outside the norms of political activity [...] but his agenda is a basically political one."
A variety of scholarship has also focused on bin Laden's overall strategy as a motive for the attacks. For instance, correspondent
Peter Bergen argues that the attacks were part of a plan to cause the United States to increase its military and cultural presence in the Middle East, thereby forcing Muslims to confront the "evils" of a non-Muslim government and establish conservative Islamic governments in the region. Michael Scott Doran, correspondent for
Foreign Affairs, further emphasizes the "mythic" use of the term "spectacular" in bin Laden's response to the attacks, explaining that he was attempting to provoke a visceral reaction in the Middle East and ensure that Muslim citizens would react as violently as possible to an increase in U.S. involvement in their region.
Aftermath
Immediate national response
The 9/11 attacks had immediate and overwhelming effects upon the people of the United States. Many
police officers and rescue workers elsewhere in the country took leaves of absence to travel to New York City to assist in the process of recovering bodies from the twisted remnants of the Twin Towers.
Blood donations across the U.S. also saw a surge in the weeks after 9/11. For the first time in history, all nonemergency civilian aircraft in the United States and several other countries including
Canada were immediately grounded, stranding tens of thousands of passengers across the world. Any international flights were closed to American airspace by the
Federal Aviation Administration, causing flights to be redirected to other countries. Canada was one of the main recipients of diverted flights and launched
Operation Yellow Ribbon to deal with the large numbers of grounded planes and stranded passengers.
War on Terrorism
The
NATO council declared that the attacks on the United States were considered an attack on all NATO nations and, as such, satisfied Article 5 of the NATO charter. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, the Bush administration declared a
war on terrorism, with the stated goals of bringing Osama bin Laden and
al-Qaeda to justice and preventing the emergence of other terrorist networks. These goals would be accomplished by means including economic and military sanctions against states perceived as harboring terrorists and increasing global surveillance and intelligence sharing. The second-biggest operation of the U.S. Global War on Terrorism outside of the United States, and the largest directly connected to terrorism, was the overthrow of the
Taliban rule from
Afghanistan, by a U.S.-led coalition. The U.S. wasn't the only nation to increase its military readiness, with other notable examples being the
Philippines and
Indonesia, countries that have their own internal conflicts with
Islamist terrorism. U.S. officials speculated on
possible involvement by Saddam Hussein immediately afterwards. Although these suspicions were unfounded, the association contributed to public acceptance for the
2003 invasion of Iraq. On
September 20,
2001, the U.S. president spoke before the nation and a
joint session of the United States Congress, regarding the events of that day, the intervening nine days of rescue and recovery efforts, and his intent in response to those events. In addition, the highly visible role played by
New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani won him high praise nationally and in New York. Many relief funds were immediately set up to assist victims of the attacks, with the task of providing
financial assistance to the
survivors of the attacks and to the families of victims. By the deadline for victim's compensation,
September 11 2003, 2,833 applications had been received from the families of those killed.
Contingency plans for the
continuity of government and the evacuation of leaders were also implemented almost immediately after the attacks.
Within the United States, Congress passed and President Bush signed the
Homeland Security Act of 2002, creating the
Department of Homeland Security, representing the largest restructuring of the U.S. government in contemporary history. Congress also passed the
USA PATRIOT Act, stating that it would help detect and prosecute terrorism and other crimes. Civil liberties groups have criticized the PATRIOT Act, saying that it allows law enforcement to invade the privacy of citizens and eliminates
judicial oversight of
law-enforcement and domestic
intelligence gathering. The Bush Administration also invoked 9/11 as the reason to initiate a secret
National Security Agency operation, "to eavesdrop on telephone and
e-mail communications between the United States and people overseas without a warrant."
Hate crimes
Numerous incidents of harassment and
hate crimes were reported against Middle Easterners and other "Middle Eastern-looking" people, particularly
Sikhs, because Sikh males usually wear
turbans, which are stereotypically associated with
Muslims in the United States. There were reports of
verbal abuse, attacks on mosques and other religious buildings (including the firebombing of a
Hindu temple) and assaults on people, including one murder;
Balbir Singh Sodhi was fatally shot on
September 15. He, like others, was a Sikh who was mistaken for a Muslim.
Muslim American reaction
Top Muslim organizations in the United States were swift to condemn the attacks on 9/11 and called "upon
Muslim Americans to come forward with their skills and resources to help alleviate the sufferings of the affected people and their families". Top organizations include:
Islamic Society of North America, American Muslim Alliance, American Muslim Council,
Council on American-Islamic Relations, The
Islamic Circle of North America, and the Shari'a Scholars Association of North America. In addition to massive monetary donations, many Islamic organizations launched blood drives and provided medical assistance, food, and residence for victims.
Following the attacks, 80,000
Arab and
Muslim immigrants were fingerprinted and registered under the
Alien Registration Act of 1940. 8,000 Arab and Muslim men were interviewed, and 5,000 foreign nationals were detained under
Joint Congressional Resolution 107-40 authorizing the use of
military force "to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States."
International response
The attacks were
denounced by
mainstream media and governments worldwide. Across the globe, nations offered pro-American support and solidarity. Leaders in most Middle Eastern countries, including Afghanistan, condemned the attacks. Iraq was a notable exception, with an immediate official statement that "the American cowboys are reaping the fruit of their
crimes against humanity." Another publicized exception was the
celebration of some Palestinians.
Approximately one month after the attacks, the United States led a broad
coalition of international forces in the removal of the
Taliban regime for harboring the
al-Qaeda organization. The
Pakistani authorities moved decisively to align themselves with the United States in a war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Pakistan provided the U.S. a number of military airports and bases for its attack on the Taliban regime and arrested over 600 supposed al-Qaeda members, whom it handed over to the U.S.
Numerous countries, including the
UK,
India,
Australia,
France,
Germany,
Indonesia,
China,
Canada,
Russia,
Pakistan,
Jordan,
Mauritius,
Uganda and
Zimbabwe introduced "anti-terrorism" legislation and froze the
bank accounts of businesses and individuals they suspected of having al-Qaeda ties. Law enforcement and
intelligence agencies in a number of countries, including
Italy,
Malaysia,
Indonesia, and the
Philippines arrested people they labeled terrorist suspects for the stated purpose of breaking up militant cells around the world. In the U.S., this aroused some controversy, as critics such as the
Bill of Rights Defense Committee argued that traditional restrictions on federal surveillance (for example
COINTELPRO's monitoring of public meetings) were "dismantled" by the
USA PATRIOT Act.
Civil liberty organizations such as the
American Civil Liberties Union and
Liberty argued that certain
civil rights protections were also being circumvented. The United States set up a detention center at
Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, to hold what they termed "
illegal enemy combatants". The legitimacy of these detentions has been questioned by, among others, the
European Parliament, the
Organization of American States, and
Amnesty International.
Conspiracy theories
Various
conspiracy theories have emerged subsequent to the attacks suggesting that individuals inside the United States knew the attacks were coming and deliberately chose not to prevent them, or that individuals outside of the terrorist organization al-Qaeda planned or carried out the attacks. The community of
civil engineers generally accepts the mainstream account that the impacts of jets at high speeds in combination with subsequent fires, rather than controlled demolition, led to the collapse of the Twin Towers.
Investigations
9/11 Commission
The
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (
9/11 Commission), chaired by former
New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean, was formed in late 2002 to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the attacks, including preparedness for, and the immediate response to, the attacks. On
July 22,
2004, the 9/11 Commission issued the
9/11 Commission Report. The commission and its report have been subject to various forms of
criticism.
Collapse of the World Trade Center
A federal technical building and
fire safety investigation of the collapses of the Twin Towers and WTC 7 has been conducted by the
United States Department of Commerce's
National Institute of Standards and Technology (
NIST). The goals of this investigation were to investigate why the buildings collapsed, the extent of injuries and fatalities, and the procedures involved in designing and managing the World Trade Center.
The report concluded that the fireproofing on the Twin Towers'
steel infrastructures was blown off by the initial impact of the planes and that, if this hadn't occurred, the towers would likely have remained standing.
Gene Corley, the director of the original investigation, commented that "the towers really did amazingly well. The terrorist aircraft didn’t bring the buildings down; it was the fire which followed. It was proven that you could take out two thirds of the columns in a tower and the building would still stand." The fires weakened the trusses supporting the floors, making the floors sag. The sagging floors pulled on the exterior steel columns to the point where exterior columns bowed inward. With the damage to the core columns, the buckling exterior columns could no longer support the buildings, causing them to collapse. In addition, the report asserts that the towers' stairwells were not adequately reinforced to provide
emergency escape for people above the impact zones. NIST stated that the final report on the collapse of WTC 7 will appear in a separate report. This was confirmed by an independent study by Purdue University.
Internal review of the CIA
The Inspector General of the CIA conducted an internal review of the CIA's pre-9/11 performance, and was harshly critical of senior CIA officials for not doing everything possible to confront terrorism, including failing to stop two of the 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, as they entered the United States and failing to share information on the two men with the FBI.
In May 2007, senators from both the
Democratic Party and the
Republican Party drafted legislation that would openly present an internal CIA investigative report. One of the backers, Senator
Ron Wyden stated "The American people have a right to know what the Central Intelligence Agency was doing in those critical months before 9/11.... I'm going to bulldog this until the public gets it." The report investigates the responsibilities of individual CIA personnel before and after the 9/11 attacks. The report was completed in 2005, but its details have never been released to the public.
Long-term effects
Economic aftermath
The attacks had a
significant economic impact on the United States and world markets. The
New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the
American Stock Exchange, and
NASDAQ didn't open on
September 11 and remained closed until
September 17. When the
stock markets reopened, the
Dow Jones Industrial Average (“DJIA”) stock market index fell 684 points, or 7.1%, to 8921, its biggest-ever one-day point decline. By the end of the week, the DJIA had fallen 1,369.7 points (14.3%), its largest one-week point drop in history. U.S. stocks lost $1.4 trillion in value for the week. The
GDP for New York City was estimated to have declined by $27.3 billion, for the last three months of 2001 and all of 2002. The Federal government provided $11.2 billion in immediate assistance to the
Government of New York City in September 2001, and $10.5 billion in early 2002 for economic development and infrastructure needs.
The 9/11 attacks also had great impact on small businesses in
Lower Manhattan, located near the
World Trade Center. Approximately 18,000
small businesses were destroyed or displaced after the attacks. The
Small Business Administration provided loans as assistance, while Community Development Block Grants and Economic Injury Disaster Loans were other ways that the Federal Government provided assistance to small business effected by the 9/11 attacks. Many questioned whether these lost jobs would ever be restored, and whether the damaged
tax base could ever recover. Economic studies of the effects of 9/11 have confirmed that the impact of the attacks on the Manhattan office market as well as on office employment was more limited than initially expected because of the strong need for face-to-face interaction in the financial services industry
North American
air space was closed for several days after the attacks and
air travel decreased significantly upon its reopening. The attacks led to nearly a 20% cutback in air travel capacity, and severely exacerbated financial problems in the struggling U.S.
airline industry.
Health effects
The thousands of tons of toxic debris resulting from the collapse of the Twin Towers consisted of more than 2,500 contaminants, including known carcinogens. This has led to
debilitating illnesses among rescue and recovery workers, which many claim to be directly linked to debris exposure. For example, NYPD Officer Frank Macri died of lung cancer that spread throughout his body on September 3, 2007; his family contends the cancer is the result of long hours on the site and they've filed for line-of-duty death benefits, which the City has yet to rule on. Health effects have also extended to some residents, students, and office workers of Lower Manhattan and nearby
Chinatown. Several deaths have been linked to the toxic dust caused by the World Trade Center's collapse and the victims' names will be included in the World Trade Center memorial. There is also scientific speculation that exposure to various toxic products in the air may have negative effects on
fetal development. Due to this potential hazard, a notable children's environmental health center is currently analyzing the children whose mothers were pregnant during the WTC collapse, and were living or working near the World Trade Center towers.
Legal disputes over the attendant costs of illnesses related to the attacks are still in the court system. On
October 17,
2006,
federal judge Alvin Hellerstein rejected New York City's refusal to pay for health costs for rescue workers, allowing for the possibility of numerous suits against the city. Government officials have been faulted for urging the public to return to lower Manhattan in the weeks shortly following the attacks.
Christine Todd Whitman, administrator of the
EPA in the aftermath of the attacks, was heavily criticized for incorrectly saying that the area was environmentally safe. President Bush was criticized for interfering with EPA interpretations and pronouncements regarding air quality in the aftermath of the attacks. In addition, Mayor Giuliani was criticized for urging financial industry personnel to return quickly to the greater
Wall Street area.
Rebuilding
On the day of the attacks, Giuliani proclaimed, "We will rebuild: We're going to come out of this stronger than before, politically stronger, economically stronger. The skyline will be made whole again." Debris removal officially ended in May 2002. The
Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, responsible for rebuilding the
World Trade Center site, has been criticized for doing little with the enormous funding directed to the rebuilding efforts.
On the sites of the totally destroyed buildings, one,
7 World Trade Center, has a new
office tower which was completed in 2006. The
Freedom Tower is currently under construction at the site and at 1,776 ft (541 m) upon completion in 2010, will become the
tallest building in North America and one of the tallest in the world. Three more towers are expected to be built between 2007 and 2012 on the site, and will be located one block east of where the original towers stood.
Memorials
In the days immediately following the attacks,
many memorials and vigils were held around the world. In addition, pictures were placed all over Ground Zero. A witness described being unable to "get away from faces of innocent victims who were killed. Their pictures are everywhere, on phone booths, street lights, walls of subway stations. Everything reminded me of a huge funeral, people quiet and sad, but also very nice. Before, New York gave me a cold feeling; now people were reaching out to help each other.”
One of the first memorials was the
Tribute in Light, an installation of 88 searchlights at the footprints of the World Trade Center towers which projected two vertical columns of light into the sky. In New York, the
World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition was held to design an appropriate memorial on the site. The winning design,
Reflecting Absence, was selected in August 2006, and consists of a pair of reflecting pools in the footprints of the towers, surrounded by a list of the victims' names in an underground memorial space. Plans for a museum on the site have been put on hold, following the abandonment of the
International Freedom Center after criticism from the families of many victims.
At the Pentagon, an outdoor
memorial is currently under construction, which will consist of a landscaped park with 184 benches facing the Pentagon. When the Pentagon was rebuilt in 2001-2002, a private chapel and indoor memorial were included, located at the spot where Flight 77 crashed into the building. At Shanksville, a permanent
Flight 93 National Memorial is in planning stages, which will include a sculpted grove of trees forming a circle around the crash site, bisected by the plane's path, while wind chimes will bear the names of the victims. A temporary memorial is located 500 yards (450 meters) from the Flight 93 crash site near Shanksville. Many other permanent memorials are being constructed around the world and a list is being updated as new ones are completed. In addition to physical monuments, scholarships and charities have been established by the victims' loved ones, along with many other organizations and private figures.
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